Addressing international mobility confusion – developing definitions and differentiations for self-initiated and assigned expatriates as well as migrants

By Maike Andresen, Franziska Bergdolt, Jil Margenfeld, M. Dickmann. 2014

273 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The literature on international human resource management indicates a growing array of different forms of international work experiences such as assigned and self-initiated expatriation. However, the criteria for demarcation of these different forms and the term ‘migrant’ are often unclear which leads to an unfortunate lack of comparability of research and a potential confusion for readers. Based on the sociological, psychological and economics literature, this article reviews and synthesizes the existing definitions of the three terms in the current research. A qualitative content analysis and the Rubicon model [Heckhausen, H., and Gollwitzer, P.M. (1987), ‘Thought Contents and Cognitive Functioning in Motivational Versus Volitional States of Mind’, Motivation and Emotion, 1, 101–120.] are used as a theoretical base to structure the findings. The paper creates a criteria-based definition and differentiation of terms and then develops a typology of four different types of expatriates: assigned expatriates, inter-self-initiated expatriates, intra-self-initiated expatriates and drawn expatriates. Implications for management as well as for future research are outlined.

Subfields: Communication, Demography, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/f61f60306d000d626f3e2e2e4dea4673dd84a181

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Communication

1. C. Brewster
2. Y. McNulty
3. P. Goldmann
4. A. Volodina
5. Maike Andresen

In Demography

1. C. Brewster
2. Y. McNulty

In Sociology and Political Science

1. C. Brewster
2. Y. McNulty
3. P. Goldmann
4. A. Volodina
5. Maike Andresen
6. Stefan Strohmeier

Citations in the corpus

• Theorizing the meaning(s) of ‘expatriate’: establishing boundary conditions for business expatriates (2016, methodology): “, 2004), independent internationally mobile professionals (Tharenou, 2013), self-initiated movers (Thorn, 2009) and inter-organizational SIEs/inter-SIEs (Andresen et al., 2014).”
• Do Overwhelmed Expatriates Intend to Leave? The Effects of Sensory Processing Sensitivity, Stress, and Social Capital on Expatriates' Turnover Intention (2018, background): “While various definitions of the expatriation concept exist, they all have the expatriate’s deployment in a foreign country in common (e.g., Andresen et al., 2014).”